


Wildfire

by coppertears



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: M/M, Pyromania, Slow Burn, clash of clans (kinda), girl!baekhyun
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-01-31 11:14:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12680766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coppertears/pseuds/coppertears
Summary: All the fires he'd set in his life--and there had been many--had not prepared him for the way this one raged.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sammariebeu](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=sammariebeu).



> For sammariebeu's erf bid--if anyone can redirect him/her here, it would be much appreciated.
> 
> To sammariebeu--I know this took a while (and it will be a while before it is completed), and that it looks nothing like the prompt you gave me, but it will bear some resemblance to that prompt in a bit! I just kind of ran with the skeleton of it and fashioned an entirely new body. I hope you enjoy this journey (and this fic), though!

It was a united landmass, once. That was how every bard, or storyteller, in every clan would begin: A united landmass, the people mingling in harmony, in laughter, in peacetime. There was no one ruling body, for they could all understand each other. The elders would settle the disputes; the criminals would be punished by those known for their strength and sense of justice; the gifted in medicine would heal the wounded. People learned through mentors, for there were many available among them, and they learned from the mistakes they made.

Then they began to drift.

Perhaps it was one man, stronger than all the rest, whom people would come to for judgment. Or a woman, outstripping all others in wisdom and perceptiveness, sought for to settle every single problem. There was that being who was one day a hag, the next a strapping hunter, then the next a mere flutter of wings, unwilling to be beholden to a single marker of identity. The tradesman who went beyond known land and discovered the mountains, and the people who lived in the bowl of the valley nestled in the middle; his experience one of survival and the endless hunt. A pair of half-crazed inventors, building hulking masses of metal that worked better and faster than human hands, weapons of devastating power, and trinkets that functioned in every which way. A group who came down from the northern mountains, with lights in their hands and the elements their playthings, calling the rain to pour on weeks-long draughts, and the wind to sweep through humid homes. Then there was a band of people with blazing swords--soldiers once, but no longer and yet more, calling upon forgotten legends and myths to imbue their dances with power of a miraculous kind. 

Ideologies, too, cut apart the unity. People held conflicting beliefs about the passage of time, about labor and possessions, about long-spun traditions treated as laws. New tribes poured in from foreign lands with their as-foreign ways, melting into a seething sea of disagreements. There were protests. There were peace talks. 

And then, the Great Breaking, as it was called: When champions came forward, each with different skills and cultural mores, and fought until those remaining became the founders of the original clans. Harmony had given way to discord. This was a fragmented landmass, now: Still whole, geographically, but within, in such turmoil. The maps were divided up, territories marked jealously. War, such a beast of a thing, awakened in the land, and skirmishes occurred at every little slight. In time, they would learn their way back to peacetime, to treaties and negotiations, to compromises. But there were those who remained at war and went further still, until the land was theirs alone to own.

This was how the Sacred Clans came to be.

It was not, really, just a single landmass as the forefathers had thought. It extended into mountains that climbed down to temperamental seas, petering out into islands before growing again into much larger landmasses. When hunting stopped being a trade and started being a way of life, Rangers set out to the edges of the map--and kept going. They charted new species of plants and animals, drew unfamiliar landscapes, refined the techniques of the hunt with the resources they found along the way, and staked claims for their clans on newly-discovered territories. 

In recent times, this was the cause of much conflict between the clan fathers. The Rangers could strike only at a single spot, and often had no way of knowing how far it would span, but often the clan fathers would mark off boundaries that would overlap with that of another clan. Those who weren’t of the same kin, crest and colors, would stumble upon each other in the same neck of woods, and the fighting would begin anew. Land was always sought; less for the space, and more for the resources they would hide in the soil. Clan fathers were loath to let go of lakes teeming with fish, soil with gold buried deep, animals treasured for their pelts and meats. There were those who shared, and there were those who refused to. The latter always ended in blood; the former, sometimes. 

But most kept to their own lay of land. There had not been a territorial dispute in years--at this point, the insider clans had divvied up as best they could, and outsider clans from neighboring islands were kept at bay by the massive undertaking that crossing seas entailed. Each had their own troubles to deal with. 

Until Rangers from two different clans stumbled upon the same stretch of dirt, faced each other down, and fired. Both found their mark. Not too long after, their clansmen came thirsting for revenge.

It was a massive undertaking. Huts were built on the fringes of the territory being disputed; symbols of war were raised by both sides; and the clan’s Engineers each brought out the most destructive weapons and concoctions they could get their hands on. There were guns blazing with twice the firepower and knockback of the normal ones, but each shot arcing to kill off five at a time. Glaives, spinning in and out of bodies, only to come spinning back. And there were more champions from all walks of life: those who drew out illusions to sneak into enemy camps and steal ideas; those who called upon the elements to wreak havoc on the battlegrounds; those who fought with sword or with bow, and might when weapons ran out of ammunition. 

The Wu Clan was among the most ancient of the Sacred Clans, and there were rumors that they had discovered the secret to flight, with sightings of bulky metal objects hovering in the skies and circling the sun. The Park Clan was younger, grown out of the Do Clan, but with plenty of firepower and modern warfare tactics that circumvented the Wu Clan’s libraries of archaic knowledge. For months, the battlegrounds ran red and gray with blood and smoke, as the two clans refused to let up on the assault.

It would have gone on, until one surrendered, if not for the night when bombs fell on the camps.

The armies of the Red Force stormed the territory, and in a split second, the clans turned from killing each other, to combining their resources and capabilities in order to survive. The invaders had come from an unnamed island to the north of the main landmass; over the years, they had gained a reputation of coming upon defenseless shores and conquering villages to claim as part of their own territory, and the Sacred Clans had had trouble fending them off. The Red Force was a common enemy. Scarred, battered, and halved by the surprise attack, the Wu and Park Clans reached an agreement to share the territory if ever they came out of the battle alive, and then they’d plunged right back in to drive back the Red Force.

It had taken more months, and the turning of the seasons, before they’d managed to weaken the Red Force enough to convince them the war wasn’t worth their while. But thousands of lives were lost, paid homage to in a magnificent funeral pyre that would be memorialized in the future. 

And, from the ordeal, a blossoming alliance.

 

 

+

 

It was the third time that day that his father had told him the story, but Chanyeol, nine years old and pouty, was not the least bit swayed. 

“I don’t want to go,” he said, turning away from the clothes his mother had laid out for him, and playing instead with the remote-controlled cars that his parents had gifted him on his birthday. 

“Chanyeol, when you were younger, I spared you from these events,” his father said, dropping to his knees in front of his petulant son. “But you’ve turned nine years old, and you need to be there; you symbolize the continuation of the alliance that was formed from the Bloodland War.”

“Then I’m not nine,” Chanyeol shot back. In his head, it was simple: If being nine was the source of his troubles, then he decided that he would remain eight years old forever.

His father sighed. “Didn’t you say the Bloodland stories are your favorites? Why are you being so stubborn? I thought you’d have liked to be there for the celebration of the alliance.”

Chanyeol looked down at his toy cars and didn’t respond.

In truth, his reluctance was due more to the fact that it was such a public event, for which he’d be scrubbed clean and told to be on his best manners, and there was nothing that exhausted him more than playing the polished younger son of the Park Clan Leaders. He’d met Kris, heir of the Wu Clan, before, when they’d both been young enough to be allowed to play in the corridors of the stronghold at the heart of the territory that the two clans shared. But Kris was older than he was, and he’d had to eventually join his parents at the festivities. For the last two years, Chanyeol had watched him from the viewing balconies of the ballroom, all stiff in starched clothes, and all in all it was a lot less exciting than the Bloodland stories his mother would lull him to sleep with.

“I don’t want to go,” he said, after the silence had stretched too long, and his car whirred against the wall he’d accidentally directed it to. “It’s not fun.”

“Please, Chanyeol.” His mother laid a hand over his, and Chanyeol looked up. His mother’s tone had that effect on him--made him feel guilty and small if he ignored her, so he didn’t. “I know your clothes make you itch, and you want to play, but you just have to go to this dinner and behave for a bit. After that, you can return to your room.”

“Only until dessert?”

His mother nodded. “Only until dessert. Once that’s done, you don’t have to stay that much longer. We’ll save that for when you’re older.”

“I’m never going to be older,” Chanyeol informed her, and his parents laughed. 

The clothes did itch. Chanyeol told his mother so, and she shook her head and smiled at him, telling him to scratch his itches away when no one was looking. His father combed his hair with gel that left his head feeling sticky. Chanyeol was close to taking back what he’d said, but his parents were smiling now, where moments ago their foreheads had creased with worry. So he took a breath, like his older sister told him to, and counted to 10.

Yura wouldn’t be with him tonight. That was another reason why Chanyeol hadn’t wanted to go. With Yura around, no one paid much attention to his mischief, because his older sister was the one in charge of entertaining guests. But since she’d gone to boarding school, he was on his own, and he would have to actually _behave_.

Yura would be in stitches if she knew. She would have come back just to watch. 

But he and his parents were at the doors of the ballroom now. There was no turning back. Chanyeol clenched his hands into fists, shook off the petulance that still hung about him in the manner that it always had about children, and thought of how much he would enjoy playing with his remote-controlled cars after dessert. 

 

 

But when was dessert going to come?

Chanyeol barely kept himself from scowling when yet another dish was uncovered, this time some rare meat from the forests to the west of the Wu Clan’s capital. His mother, in cajoling him out of his room, had not told him that there would be about 12 courses. He’d almost thrown a fit, but he’d turned a year older and his governess had told him that big boys didn’t cry when things didn’t go their way. Instead they went to their “happy place” and things would be pleasant enough for them to forget that they were upset.

The problem was, his happy place was his bedroom with his remote-controlled cars, that his hyperactive nine-year-old mind was already dismantling, programming, and re-assembling to shoot mini-fireballs into the air. He’d done it, before, with a toy robot that the Chief Engineer had brought him from a visit to the Do Clan. Once Chanyeol was through with it, the toy robot had set one of the smaller dining alcoves on fire. It had taken months for the alcove to be restored; and longer still before Chanyeol was allowed near his tools.

It made him wish he’d never agreed, though some part of him knew that this was one of those non-negotiable things where his refusal was more for his parents to humor him, than having any real impact on the outcome.

Chanyeol glanced around. He was seated to the left of his mother, next to a retinue of councilors from the Park Clan--none of whom he’d interacted with, beyond the cursory introductions his parents would make. Kris was nowhere near him, instead sitting with small girl Chanyeol had been told was the same age as he was. She was Kris’ sister, but also _not_ ; when the Wu family had arrived, he’d heard his governess gossiping with the cook about how the little girl was the Byun clan’s youngest daughter. Another alliance, his governess had said.

She was different from his mother or from his sister, though. She was so… small, for one. Chanyeol couldn’t imagine having to talk to her. It felt almost like a gust of wind would blow her over, and Chanyeol liked playing with fire, so he didn’t know how well she would fare with that. And Kris was--odd. He wouldn’t let anyone close to her; the 11-year-old always somehow angled his body so that she was partially blocked from view. Chanyeol knew he got about that around Yura, sometimes, even though he was younger and she was stronger, smarter. But she never patronized him, instead encouraging him to help anyone who was in trouble.

Kris probably shouldn’t be patronizing his sister, either, but Chanyeol had to _act like a nine-year-old sometimes_ , his governess would say, and not stick his nose in other people’s business. 

Still, if he kept treating her like the delicate porcelain doll she looked like, then she really would become a delicate porcelain doll, and then where would she be?

The rare meats were switched out, and yet another plate of unidentifiable fruits and greens were placed. Chanyeol bit his lip and braced himself for a long dinner.

 

 

Dessert was honeyed cakes with blueberry syrup, dusted in sugar and thin orange rinds. But Chanyeol’s pleasure was due less to the arrival of one of his favorite sweets, and more to the fact that he would be free in a while. The dinner was at an end. He knew it, and his parents it, which was why when the bells rang to signal the opening of the ballroom to the dances, they made the explanations to the Wu Clan as Chanyeol bowed, smiled, and took his leave.

He didn’t wander far--just back to his room, with the night guard offering him some of the feast’s dinner that had been brought to his post. Chanyeol shook his head and gestured for him to keep eating. “I’ll just be by to get a few things,” he said, “I’m not staying here long.”

“And where will you be?” Jiho asked with a twinkle in his eye. He’d been in Chanyeol’s guard since he was five years old; he knew what his charge could get up to. 

“Oh, just the gardens.” Chanyeol shot him the dimpled smile that his sister said was his best weapon against fawning adults. They took one look at it and assumed him innocent. It had stopped working for Jiho, but now they each took it more as a sign that the guard could pretend at ignorance when asked what, exactly, the Clan Leaders’ son was up to. Now, it was more of a game than anything.

Besides, Chanyeol wasn’t planning on much tonight. He would be working on increasing the speed of his remote-controlled cars, so fast they would leave fiery trails but wouldn’t burn the car parts. The fireballs could wait another day.

“Of course,” Jiho said, digging right back into his food. “Try to not set anything on fire, Chanyeollie.”

Chanyeol didn’t reply. There was a reason why Jiho had said _try_ , not _don’t_.

The gardens were alight with the party spilling out of the ballroom, but Chanyeol ignored the paths favored by courting couples, and settled into a secluded area with a sunken stone ground. The place had once been some kind of pool or fountain. It was the most level surface here, aside from the stone benches, but just in case he did set things on fire somehow, the sunken ground would hide most of it. 

He took out his tools and began the programming.

Chanyeol was seven years old when the Chief Engineer had first been introduced to him. Something about newly-commissioned weaponry, or construction materials--whichever it was, the Chief Engineer had dropped by the Clan House to show the patents to his parents, and Chanyeol had been in the same room. It had taken quite a lot of begging on his end to be allowed to stay for the demonstration. There were sparks, and bright flashes, and whirling circles in the air. There had been wildly rotating gears and a solid block of metal transforming into compact hand-cannon with so much firepower--they’d had to move to the training grounds for it. The Chief Engineer had seen fit to show Chanyeol how to program the contraption. He’d known, then, and so had his parents, and so had the Chief Engineer: This was what was in his blood. This was what he wanted to do.

From then on, there were blueprints and multiple visits to Master Engineers. His parents wouldn’t allow him to go to the mines himself for the ores and minerals he often used for his inventions; Chanyeol protested, but deep down, he understood. The Chief Engineer gifted him with books on Physics, and Maths, and a whole host of other subjects that he eagerly devoured. Mornings he spent with a tutor who would go over the theories, and normally he’d also have supervision for his experiments--except he often did them when no one was around. It had resulted in many scorched walls, not because he failed, but because the experiments had done what he’d programmed them to do, which was set things on fire.

Chanyeol loved fire.

He made other modifications, of course--more efficient processes, multi-purpose machinery, invulnerable armor, all of which had even more hidden twists and tricks. At nine, he had about 30 patents to his name, if his parents hadn’t vetoed about a hundred more for being too unnecessarily destructive or powerful. Chanyeol would sulk, but then those that did get patented were fast assimilated by the Clan, so he took that as consolation.

Tonight, this was more of a party trick than anything, a mild modification compared to the more elaborate ones he was used to executing. It took him a while to judge the precise material of the tires and machinery, and what he could use to reinforce them; to recalculate the remote-controlled cars’ settings; and to fit them all together so that the little gears inside the cars could adjust just as fast as the programmed speed, and the shell of it all could withstand the friction and the pressure that the speed would create. By this point, he’d tuned out the noise from the celebration.

He didn’t notice the lengthening shadows, nor the dimming lights. Setting down the cars on the sunken ground, he was completely unaware of a movement in the bushes framing the alcove, or the figure tiptoeing up to him until it spoke.

“What are you doing?”

Chanyeol jumped in surprise. He whirled around, and found himself face to face with the Wu Clan’s adopted daughter.

“Oh!” The girl clenched her fists in her ruffled skirts, and dipped down in a curtsey. Against his will, Chanyeol returned it with a formal, if stilted, bow. “You’re the Park Clan’s son--Chanyeollie!”

“Chanyeol,” Chanyeol corrected with gritted teeth. She was holding up his experiment; he’d already exhausted his willingness to play nice a while ago, at dinner.

“My brother calls you Chanyeollie,” she said, shrugging. “He says you do this a lot.”

“I do _what_ a lot?”

“Build stuff,” she said. She nodded at the cars and the remote in his hands. “He says you make cool new things, and you’re really, really smart.”

Chanyeol reluctantly let his irritation go. Her flattery was enough to dissolve it.

“I’m Baekhyun, by the way,” she said, flashing him a smile. “What is it you’re doing here?” She stepped forward and knelt beside the lip of the sunken area. 

“Don’t touch,” Chanyeol ordered, “and stay back a bit. I made--changes, just a bit, to these.” He gave her a wary look that she returned with wide eyes. They were, he mused, not unlike his older sister’s. “If you promise not to tell anyone, you can watch.”

She nodded with enthusiasm. Chanyeol waited a beat, and then he knelt beside her. He didn’t try to explain what he’d been doing--from experience he’d learned that not everyone could follow along with the reasoning, and that was just the way it was. Not everyone was interested in learning about the mechanics, only that it would work the way that he said it would. 

Instead, he started up the cars.

The glow from the fiery trails that the speeding cars left lit up Baekhyun’s face, which was now slack with wonder. Chanyeol let a wave of smugness and pride wash through him. He enjoyed the effect his successful experiments had on his audience, how they were left captive by mere programming commands and controls that hadn’t taken him all that long to add in. 

“You did this yourself?” Baekhyun exclaimed. “I think you’re better than even our Chief Engineer.”

“Yes,” Chanyeol said, and allowed a smile. She wasn’t so bad after all. “Well, maybe I’m not at that level yet, this is pretty simple.”

“No, you’re really good,” she insisted, her eyebrows crease in her petulance to convince him she was right. She stuck out a pale, chubby hand and grinned at him. “Will you teach me how you did this?”

Chanyeol looked at her hand, and then her face, glowing with sincerity and the still-circling trails of his cars. He contemplated having to explain things step-by-step, running through blueprints with patience, having someone spectate--even if she wouldn’t be around much.

But it might liven up these alliance-mandated events that he knew were in their futures.

Baekhyun was still smiling, and Chanyeol made a decision: He shook her hand. 

“Of course.”


	2. Chapter 2

Twelve years later, Chanyeol was regretting ever agreeing to Baekhyun's request.

It was the afternoon before the annual celebratory dinner of the Bloodland War. Chanyeol had spent no small amount of time with dignitaries from the Wu Clan, and if his parents had not ushered him away in time, he would have spent hours of it drilling the dragons' Chief Engineer. She was a practical sort of woman, with aviator goggles pushed high up on her head and her clothes containing a variety of oddly-shaped pockets. He'd almost gotten her to confess the machinations of a particular war weapon the Wu Clan used. But then his parents had stepped in, the Chief Engineer remembered there were certain secrets that should not be shared, and Chanyeol had pouted.

No matter. He'd figure it out himself; he'd only thought that asking her would be an easier route to take. 

Then he and Kris, as was their wont, took to the training fields for both banter and competition. The Wu Clan's heir was a Soldier, and Chanyeol would often call him to spar in order to test out the new weapons he'd concocted. Sometimes, when he'd made new guns, he would pull Kris aside and teach him how to use them. Then he'd step back and watch--it was gratifying if Kris got it right, but it was also amusing when he didn't, and ended up sprawled on the ground because Chanyeol's guns and hand-cannons often had a lot of knockback to them.

He and Kris had become fast friends in an environment where their constant display of comradeship prevented wars. They also excelled in different fields, so they'd not left room for comparison. While the Bloodland War had united the peoples of the Wu and Park Clans, there were those who would sometimes get testy over differences in cultural norms, or the thought of having to share territory. Chanyeol knew for a fact that many of his clansmen looked on with skepticism at the Wu Clan's insistence on elaborate body tattoos. 

They usually ended well after lunch, when Chanyeol would bid Kris goodbye, detour to the kitchens to snag the picnic basket that they always prepared with discretion, and head on over to the gardens with his tools and equipment. For the past 12 years, this was his routine--it occurred without fail at the alcove with the long-barren sunken ground, with the same person.

He would always find Baekhyun there, waiting on one of the many stone benches. She'd been the one to beg for secrecy, that first year they'd met, and Chanyeol had shrugged because he couldn't understand why teaching Baekhyun about engineering would be in any way illegal. But then again, Baekhyun could also have asked her clan's own Chief Engineer to teach her.

It wasn't his business, anyway. He'd promised her he'd teach her, and Chanyeol kept his promises, even if the things she did drove him insane. 

She greeted him now, not bothering to curtsey. It had taken him a couple of years to convince her to stop doing so. Still, he knew--and Baekhyun knew--she'd done it because she wanted to, not because Chanyeol had any hope of swaying her. For another, she was not wearing her skirts today, only an outfit that bore close resemblance to that of an apprenticed jeweler. 

"I still don't understand why you insist on keeping this under wraps," Chanyeol said as he began to set up. He knew, without looking up, that Baekhyun had sidled closer to his side. "Is learning engineering prohibited in your clan or something? Kris tells me you've made leaps in previously discriminatory policies."

He predicted that the mention of her adopted brother's name would make her scrunch up her nose in a mixture of annoyance and affection. Sometimes, it gave him pause--how much he knew this girl, how it had taken her a night in a garden with flaming cars, to worm his way into his safe spaces. 

She did wrinkle her nose, when Chanyeol glanced up at her. He turned back to the mechanical arm he'd brought today. It was part of a bigger project--automated body parts, that he'd thought would be a good substitute for those with scarred limbs and other appendages. Maybe he'd even build a human-like artificial intelligence. That was for another day; now, he thought only of those clan members laid up in hospitals or in their homes, unable to function as society demanded. If he did this right, he'd be able to integrate these into their bodies as seamlessly as their own flesh.

Baekhyun dropped down to a crouch beside him. He saw the flash of a bracelet around her wrist, made of copper wire twisted to mimic creeping vines, with small green crystals winking in the sunlight. She must have just picked up the craft, then. Not just for show, but for real, like she'd whined at him the whole of last summer when the Wu Clan had visited and her family had thought she was up in her rooms with a heat-induced headache. In reality she'd talked Chanyeol's ear off, and then almost blew up the gardens.

"Found a Master Jeweler then?" he asked, beginning to set up his laptop and hooking up his programming controls. He reached into one of his many coat pockets, almost as many as that of the Wu Clan's Chief Engineer, and pulled out a screwdriver. 

"I dropped by the markets today and made the bracelet," Baekhyun said. "Is that where you've concentrated all the programming inputs?"

She reached out a hand. Chanyeol took hold of her wrist; she should have known better by now, but as always, Baekhyun acted before she thought. He fitted her hand into a pair of his customized work gloves, built to withstand heat and insulate from static. Baekhyun huffed in impatience. Once the gloves were on, she reached out again, and this time Chanyeol did not stop her as she flipped open the mechanical arm's hub for the programming controls. It was a tiny green chip in a sea of wires.

He waited. Baekhyun squinted at the set-up, at the stats now displayed on Chanyeol's laptop screen, and at the arm itself.

"For grip?" she asked, prodding the folding fingers at the little metal balls that simulated joints. 

"Close," Chanyeol said. He slipped down his examination goggles--they were really intelligent screens that scanned any remotely-engineered objects, and he trained his field of vision now on the mechanical arm. Baekhyun reached past him to fish out another pair that he'd had to adjust for her, because she had a smaller head and sensitive eyes. She hummed as she saw what Chanyeol saw, a tiny blue light pulsing along the band of her goggles to indicate that it had been synced to Chanyeol's: A white wire, running from the programming hub and splitting down to the fingers. 

"Really? It's not the grip?" She pursed her lips as she watched Chanyeol cradle the mechanical arm in his lap. 

Chanyeol sighed, considering her. Baekhyun wasn't an idiot; she picked up on most engineering concepts that took years for even fully-fledged Engineers to truly understand, and it had all been under his not-quite-so-informative tutelage. Still, she reminded him of a truth he'd learned years ago: That he had a different way of seeing things, of working with them, and not even Baekhyun who was mostly used to his ways could follow along. 

"What's important about programming the grip?" he asked instead. He pulled up the laptop screen and zoomed in on the wire, the pulses racing all along it, and he swiped in closer to begin mapping out a movement track. Baekhyun's forehead was creased in thought. "When do you grip objects?"

"When you have to hold on tight," she supplied, her eyes flickering from the screen, to the arm, to his face. "And there's a tension to it, a force-- _oh_." She blinked, hand hovering over the arm's programming hub. "The key point here is the wire. And a movement track running along the arm, not just the hand itself. So, a swinging motion?"

He nodded, pleased that she'd caught on to the gist of it. "Rotational, not swinging," he said. "Or at least, not _just_ swinging. What about the hand?"

"You still have wires running through it," she whispered to herself. "So, maybe not a grip, because I don't see anything to hold the tension, but a… catching motion?"

Chanyeol resisted the urge to clap. "That's exactly right. You're learning after all."

"We've been at this for 12 years," Baekhyun said, settling in now that the questioning was over. Chanyeol was never sure how to teach her the more practical parts, as he had a tendency of just fiddling around, so now they'd worked out that she'd watch what he tried out and note down what worked and what didn't. Then, when it was her turn, he'd hand it over to her to piece together everything that would work, cross-checking with his own knowledge to make sure she didn't cross the wrong wires or program the wrong tracks. "If I didn't learn anything, then maybe you're just a bad teacher."

Chanyeol rolled his eyes. He took a minute to focus on the track mapping, assigning coordinates and typing in code. Beside him, Baekhyun took out the suspension tube and began setting up the mechanical arm, hooking it to the underside of the lid. From there, wires were plugged straight to Chanyeol's laptop, and the arm would twitch and swing with every command. 

"You're the one who asked me," he reminded her during a lull in the programming. The arm was now moving incrementally in degrees. Chanyeol scanned the motion for any jerkiness or stutters; Baekhyun took down notes. 

There was no bite in his words. Some visits, Chanyeol would get frustrated with his unwanted charge, because he wanted time alone to his creations. Baekhyun was no help, either; it took her a while to tame her flightiness, distracted as she was about every little item, and often prone to touching what should not be touched. Still, through the years, they'd formed an understanding--if not a friendship--and Chanyeol did appreciate that there was someone his age who could read his moods and was interested in his programming.

"Well, you could have said no," Baekhyun shot back, and the ritual was finally complete.

She'd improved so much. He watched with a critical eye as she ran through the first programming stages when they finally switched places, him taking down notes, and her figuring out the entirety of the puzzle. The pulsing had to be a constant beat, he knew. The wires in the suspension tube would be hooked up to a headpiece that would read the wearer's intentions. She really only had to figure out how to mimic the patterns of human thought in the context of electrical pulses--

The arm jerked. Then it rotated in one smooth motion, and once it completed the arc, it closed its fingers around an invisible object.

"Good job," Chanyeol said as Baekhyun, flushed red with pride, turned to him. She almost reminded him of the pups that the gardeners kept--eyes constantly begging wide for approval, tails wagging behind. "We'll end here--I haven't had time to bring along the tools needed to program it to sense the approach of an object even if the headpiece may not pick up on it due to the inattention of the wearer."

"It's fine, we'll be here a week, anyway," Baekhyun said. She helped him put away his things, and sat back when Chanyeol began pulling out the food from the picnic basket. 

"Are you sure you'll be learning engineering?" Chanyeol asked, raising an eyebrow at her. "I hear it's past the time when your people choose their specializations."

"I'm thinking about it," she said, helping herself to the flat noodles and rich dipping sauces. "Besides, I'm a member of the Clan Family, so it's not like they expect me to get a job other than helping to run the clan. We do consider Crafstmanship a separate track, anyway, so I can also learn that in the meantime."

"And won't the Clan Family be surprised at your sudden prowess in engineering, considering you've been keeping all this a secret?"

It was Baekhyun's turn to frown at him. She didn't answer, instead directing her gaze to the bushes. 

"I'm not going to press you," Chanyeol said, after a moment too long had passed. He was used to Baekhyun's evasiveness when these questions arose. "It's just that I can't help but wonder if this refusal to answer is because of you, or because of me, or because of the field itself."

Baekhyun preoccupied herself with chugging down the lilyflower juice. Chanyeol let it go. He took himself back to the research he'd begun doing just this week, on new particulates that the Chief Engineer had discovered that could potentially improve the durability of the clan's machines. It was strange, those particulates. They seemed to be able to shift along to any impact made on them, pressing in before bouncing back with the elasticity of a rubber band. He'd promised the Chief Engineer that he'd look into binding them together, and see if they'd still act the same way, and if they'd be able to mold them into shape as well without triggering their tendency to re-shape themselves into their original forms.

"It's not because of the field," Baekhyun said, when they'd gone through most of the picnic. She didn't look at him. 

Chanyeol absorbed this. "So it's because of me, or because of you."

"It's both." She stood in a fluid motion, the bracelet wrapped around her wrist still twinkling in the light. "It's just for the best that no one knows how closely acquainted we are." 

Chanyeol wasn't sure how to react to that. He'd known Baekhyun for over half a decade. She was a pain in the ass sure, and most times he thought of her as a student rather than as a friend, but she was still one of the few that he trusted with his experiments. With his thoughts. They carried out a bizarre routine, sure, where they ribbed each other and pretended to act indifferent, but there had been many inter-clan visits when they'd sought each other out and revelled in scientific wonders. She wasn't a genius like he was--it was fact--but she was silver-tongued and intelligent, and helped him navigate his way through the intricacies of society. 

She was different from Yura. There was no motherliness to her, despite her femininity, but Baekhyun had taught him about life and about being with people, as much as he'd taught her how to make metals into playthings, and lines of code into weapons. She'd been the one to teach him the art of masking emotions, and in the wings, she'd also been the one privy to the harsh realities of those emotions. He'd done the same for her. The thought, then, that theirs was a relationship--as acquaintances, or as friends--that wasn't sanctioned, left a bitter taste in his mouth. 

"I thought it was only the Huang Clan that separated men from women," he tried, because for the first time in his life, he felt how scrambled his thoughts were. Spin-cycle: It was rough and tumble, and he'd never felt more wrong-footed than he did in this moment. 

Was this what others felt when he tried to explain his own thought processes and formulas to them?

"No, not like that," Baekhyun said, shaking her head, as she began to gather up the jewelry-making kit that she'd left to pine on the stone bench. "To be more accurate, it's mostly a _me_ , and whoever I got involved with, thing."

"I don't understand."

To his surprise, Baekhyun laughed. It was a rich sound, and it escaped her often; he was always able to tell exactly where she was in a party because, while her laughter was not the booming kind, it held a definite character to it that matched its owner. "That's probably the first time I've ever heard you say that," she said, grinning. "The genius Park Chanyeol, not understanding anything? A historical landmark for sure."

"Well, you could just explain," he told her, though his annoyance was more feigned than real. He knew that there were things he didn't know, of course. Baekhyun had witnessed the summer when he'd been 15 and confronted with his own limitations, and had barely helped hold back the blazing heat of his frustrations. 

"It's not really that much of a problem, as long as we don't act too familiar with each other." She winked at him. "I'll see you at the dinner later, then?"

"Of course."

She turned to go. Chanyeol found himself running through her words one more time, but then shook himself out it, deciding instead to work on another experiment. Yura was home, this year. She'd bear the brunt of the attention.

 

 

The ball was as dull as ever. 

Dinner was long over but, as he was no longer a fretful nine-year-old, Chanyeol was expected to offer dances to eligible young ladies and men. He knew that since his 18th birthday had passed, without rumors of him succumbing to the wildness of youth, there had been a number of betting pools regarding his sexual preferences. He'd known all the secret places in this building since he was 11; he'd caught wind of a tall tale that he was in love with automatons. 

He didn't particularly care, but it irked him, just a little, how people were so ignorant as to think that he'd stick his genitalia and non-machine standard fluids in a hunk of metal. People had preferences, but Engineers worth their salt would know better than to do such a thing. 

He hovered by a cocktail table now, trying to find an appropriate dance partner who would know what he or she was doing. Chanyeol had spent years buried in machine grease, and his parents had soon given up on forcing him to attend etiquette lessons. He knew a thing or two about the box-step, but that was the extent of it. In his teenage years, he'd avoided it with a well-placed argument to his parents that since the majority of the ball attendees were from the older set, it would be viewed as predatory on their part to dance with an adolescent boy. Then, in the last few years, there had been a variety of planned illnesses or injuries that prevented even hand-holding--tactics which had caused Yura to flutter a shaking hand over a smile, and Baekhyun to throw her head back in laughter before they'd part ways after their sessions. 

He hadn't had the time to build an excuse, and now every eye was on him. Chanyeol suppressed the urge to start a firestorm in the ballroom. His decoys--still pending approval for patenting--were in his pockets. 

At that moment, a hand fell on his shoulder, and Chanyeol turned to find Kris with a glass of whiskey in his hand. "You look tense tonight."

"I'm expected to dance, tonight," Chanyeol shot back. He and Kris shared smiles over mutual suffering, even though Chanyeol knew that Kris drew admirers just as the smells of the bakery in the morning lured in early risers. 

The taller man finished his drink and then set it on the table, just beside Chanyeol's elbow. "I'm not sure how you got out of it these past few years, but I respect you all the more for managing it until now. I've had one too many old ladies pinch my cheeks when I had to make the courtesy dances at 13."

"Dancing is hell," Chanyeol said, not bothering to hide his dismissive tone. "I'd rather be in my lab."

"Your parents probably think it in their best interests to get you out, so they don't accidentally let you create something that will allow you to take over the entire world," Kris returned. He bumped shoulders with Chanyeol in a brief moment of camaraderie. 

Chanyeol scoffed. "There's no benefit to taking over the world," he said. "Too much unnecessary work."

"Of course you'd think that," Kris said, shaking his head. "But if you had control, anyway, what would you do?"

Chanyeol shrugged. "Build better machines. Find, and then cultivate, valuable but limited resources. I don't know." He glanced over at his friend, whose gaze had chilled, directed towards a couple on the dance floor that Chanyeol couldn't quite make out. Hours spent staring at laptop screens had caused his eyes to be sensitive to bright lights. He usually wore tinted goggles, anyway, so that it wasn't a problem, but on the dance floor it hurt to look at anything for too long. "Was your potential dance partner taken away from you?"

"No," Kris all but growled. "I don't like the way that man is holding my sister."

_Sister?_ Chanyeol thought, and then remembered. "Ah, Baekhyun?" He squinted again at the spot that Kris was glaring at. There was the vague form of a man and a woman, dancing, but they didn't look to be doing anything untoward. "I'm sorry, I can't really see."

"Chanyeol, come with me," Kris said, straightening. He didn't wait for a response from the young Engineer. Instead, he walked forward, and the line of his shoulders was set in a way that Chanyeol was all too familiar with, and didn't quite like to see in this context. Kris only wore it in training or, as had been told in these storied halls, in battles. It was the stance of a Soldier about to show no mercy. So while it rankled that the Wu Clan's heir had ordered him around, for a concern he had nothing to do with, Chanyeol followed. 

It was really only around Kris that Chanyeol was not the one setting explosions.

They wove through the dancing couples, many whose irritation showed before they realized who was passing through, at which they'd put on amiable expressions. Kris ignored all of them; Chanyeol tried to make up for his brusqueness by murmuring apologies and acknowledgments in his wake. 

When they got there, Chanyeol shifted from preparing to hold Kris back, to being on the offensive right alongside him.

Baekhyun must have accepted the invitation out of courtesy, because she was neither enamored nor happy with her current situation. The man who was holding her kept trying to pull her ever closer, a slick smile on his face. His fingers around her waist were all too possessive for a casual dance partner. Chanyeol could sense Baekhyun's disgust from a mile away; only her manners, and the fact that she must not have wanted to cause a scene, kept her from pushing him away. When he talked, he bent too close to her ear, lips pressed almost to the skin of her fair neck. 

Kris stepped close, halting them mid-step. Nearby couples were beginning to stare. Chanyeol moved to position himself behind Baekhyun, blocking her--but not the man--from view. 

"Take your hands off her," Kris said. It was quiet; he was not a man who spoke at volume. But it was laden with the promise of a swiftly-delivered threat, that Baekhyun's dance partner must have been oblivious to, because he looked annoyed at the interruption.

"Excuse me? I asked her to dance first," he retorted. 

"Take your hands off her, or you'll regret it."

From the corner of his eye, Chanyeol saw that the guards were beginning to take notice, and had paused when they recognized the people involved. He turned back in time to see that Kris' face had darkened, while Baekhyun looked relieved. 

"I don't see how you have the right to order me about, and she isn't complaining." The man

Kris' eyebrows pulled together even more. He opened his mouth, at the same time as Baekhyun snapped, "That's because I was contemplating whether I should step on your foot or kick you in the crotch, you lowlife," and Chanyeol pried the man's hands off of Baekhyun. 

Then the first punch was thrown. 

The room seemed to erupt, then. Chanyeol reeled back from the punch, Kris jabbed forward with intent, and Baekhyun's features contorted into a scowl as she swept her skirts out of the way to stomp, _hard_ , on the man's foot. Chanyeol recovered at the same time as the guards came running. At that point, Kris and the man were on a full-out brawl that Baekhyun was cheering on. A number of the man's friends came forward to join the fight, and at the sight of them Chanyeol's blood boiled even more, because these were his clansmen. The man was one of his. 

The alliance had never felt more tenuous than it did at that moment.

He could throw in punches of his own, but at this rate, it would create a bloodier mess. His fingers dove into his pocket, sought out the firestorm decoys (nothing more than bombs spouting harmless flames, shaped like candles), and activated them. Knowing he had only a minute until they engaged, Chanyeol threw them down to the floor, at the same time as he hauled Baekhyun and Kris out of the way.

He ushered them through a secret doorway, but not before his decoys painted the dance floor in sunset streaks.

 

 

There was A Talk, delivered by their parents in the same room, though Chanyeol could still detect the hint of pride from the Wu and Park Clan Leaders. The day after that, there were speeches about unity, harmony, and some other synonym of the previous two. By the end of it, everyone was back to celebrating the Bloodland War, while the man they'd gotten into a brawl with was subjected to house detention, along with his friends. 

On the day that the Wu Clan was due to leave, Chanyeol came across Baekhyun in one of the hidden dining alcoves. Only those who really looked at the tiny crack between the bookcase and the wall covering it, knew of its existence. He'd showed it to her once, but he hadn't expected to find her there while he was seeking refuge for another of his numerous experiments. She was back in the traditional wear of the Wu Clan, an image of the dragon running diagonally from the shoulder of her dress to the hem of its long skirt. The white and gold of it made her features look even paler in the sunlight falling through the latticed windows of the alcove.

"Is it because of Kris?" Chanyeol asked, and regretted it almost immediately after. It really _was_ none of his business, he knew. But something about the scene at the dinner had nagged at him. He'd tried to brush the thought aside, but then it made sense, somehow--that Baekhyun would be so wary about being seen with him, because she had a protective brother. 

Baekhyun didn't even look surprised to see him there. She eyed the materials he was carrying, but made no move to ask after them. "What's because of Kris?"

"That you're keeping all of this a secret," Chanyeol said. He waited for an acknowledgment, but she gazed back at him without a change in her expression, and so he went about depositing his burden on the table. "He seems to look after you well."

"More like he thinks I can't take care of myself," Baekhyun murmured. 

"I'm not like that guy, though," Chanyeol continued. He paused in his examination of his tools to look at her, make sure he understood. "I wouldn't treat you like that."

Baekhyun tilted her head. "No, you wouldn't," she said, "because you don't have the same look in your eyes when I'm watching you watch me. You're… different."

That gave Chanyeol pause. "Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?"

"I'm not sure," Baekhyun said. She stood, and Chanyeol straightened on instinct. "I know what I'd like it to be, but you're not there yet." She blinked. "Maybe you won't ever be there at all."

They stared at each other. It felt--fragile, in its way. It reminded Chanyeol of a time when he'd crept down to the meadows and found some of the boys in his clan, chasing fireflies with glass jars. He'd watched from the treeline as one boy leaned against the tree, and turned the glass jar this way and that, observing the frantic beating of the firefly's wings against the glass. There was a light there, blinking, but it could die out in a breath. 

Baekhyun was far from being a tiny firefly, helpless to escape the glass jar, but as they continued to stand there, Chanyeol wondered if the reality was that he was the firefly, and Baekhyun was the glass. He could beat his wings and look for ways to escape, but he could only ever see _through_ the jar, never out of it. 

"See you next season," Baekhyun finally said, and the silence withered away. Chanyeol mentally shook himself.

"Yes, see you."

She nodded at him, then pressed her hand to the false panel on the back of the bookcase. It swung out, she took one last look behind her, and then she was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> landfall: 12/03  
> wildfire: 12/10

**Author's Note:**

> This will be an ongoing, multi-chaptered fic, that will be updated every two weeks. The next update will be on Nov. 26 (Sunday). 
> 
> Because this is multi-chaptered, I'll be adding the tags as I go along, and will add ahead of time especially for anything remotely triggering.


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